Foster likely composed the song after having been inspired by the narrative of popular anti-slavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," while likely referencing imagery witnessed on his visits to the Bardstown, Kentucky farm called Federal Hill.[5] In Foster's sketchbook, the song was originally entitled "Poor Uncle Tom, Good-Night!," but was altered by Foster as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!". AbolitionistFrederick Douglass thought the song stimulated "the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root and flourish."[6]

Within the first verse, "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-night!" describes the natural beauty and joyous feelings associated with a Kentucky farm landscape. The chorus of the song that begins, "weep no more, my lady" acknowledges absence from this environment and a longing by the narrator to return.

In its entirety, which contains three verses and one chorus, "My Old Kentucky Home" divulges the narrative of an enslaved servant that compares the relative joys of life on a Kentucky farm with what they envision their new life to be after having been sold to a sugar plantation in the coastal region of the south. The lyric repeated in the first, second, and third verses, "By'n by hard times comes a knocking at the door, then My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" references that the Kentucky farm on which the narrator has lived is experiencing financial difficulties that have been solved by the selling-off of its enslaved servants. The narrator reveals that the majority of his peers have been sold from the Kentucky farm leaving only few behind. It is revealed in later verses,"A few more days till we totter on the road" that the narrator has also been sold to a plantation further south, where it is suggested that labor is more intense and there is little regard for the slave's personal health or happiness. The narrator suggests that he will likely perish as a result of being sold-south, and is acknowledging the days until his departure from his beloved Kentucky home.

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The song "My Old Kentucky Home" establishes a decisive moment within Stephen Foster's career in regards to his personal perspective of slavery. Having acknowledged the adversities endured by enslaved servants in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Foster wrote "My Old Kentucky Home" to expose the hardships associated with the institution of slavery. Upon its release, "My Old Kentucky Home" grew quickly in popularity, selling thousands of copies. The song held popularity for over a decade and throughout the American Civil War. Soldiers of the war, both Union and Confederate, visited Federal Hill by the thousands to see the landmark that lent visual inspiration for Foster's song. After the war, Federal Hill continued to be frequented by tourists throughout the remainder of the 19th century.[7] In 1923, Federal Hill mansion and the remaining 200 acres were purchased by the Commonwealth of Kentucky as an historic shrine to protect and preserve the farm in honor of Foster's anti-slavery ballad. In 1928, the Commonwealth of Kentucky's legislation voted to make Foster's ballad its state song. As a result, ultimately, Foster's composition "My Old Kentucky Home," and therefore Federal Hill, contributed to the altering of public sentiment towards the institution of slavery, helping to lead to the end of slavery in America. Today, Federal Hill remains a state historic site charged with the mission to provide context to the anti-slavery movement in the United States.